


Sandoval's Guide to Blaseball Cities

by livico



Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-18 13:14:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29118822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/livico/pseuds/livico
Summary: When given a season off, Sandoval Crossing takes the time to travel around North America on a grand tour. What do the cities of Internet League Blaseball look like when you're not engaged in a disciplinary death game?
Kudos: 6





	1. Intro

**Author's Note:**

> This was a little project I started during the siesta and didn't finish, so you're getting it now. Future chapters about the remaining season 8 siesta-era cities are to come- sorry, Lift fans, maybe I'll circle around to Tokyo in the future.

You travel a lot as a professional blaseball player. Every season, we go all over North America to play against the other teams- but because of the fast-paced and unrelenting nature of the splort, I often don’t have time to actually stop and get a feel for the cities I’ve been through. But now, with the season-long siesta, I think I finally have time to get out and see the sights of some of the places I’ve played. This was going to be a different kind of grand tour than the likes of Jessica Telephone, Nolanestophia Patterson, or Alyssa Harrell (and soon to be Jaylen Hotdogfingers) had gone on with their varied team-swap shenanigans. So with this in mind, I started up my car and drove out of my own hometown of Hellmouth, which is not notable here except for the fact that you should never visit it. And once I finally navigated out of Utah, I was all set to begin. My name's Sandoval Crossing, and bear with me. We've got a lot of ground to cover.


	2. Los Angeli

The first stop on my grand tour was Los Angeli, and by its very nature that meant it was the second, third, fourth, and so on and so forth. I expected driving through the infinite cities to be an absolute pain, but I had a reasonably alright time save for the minor headaches of trying to figure out a fifth-dimensional turn signal. But this wouldn’t be a travel guide if I didn’t experience everything the city had to offer, so for the rest of my visit I took only TRBU. TRBU (which stands for The Really Big Uber) is Los Angeli’s public rail transit system, put in place after the city’s complete shift to anticapitalism. It’s free, it’s efficient, it’s unionized, and it’s confusing. More than once on a journey to another part of another Los Angeles I was certain that I saw someone I knew only for them to be a complete stranger, and then for me to find out the car was empty the whole time. Other times, I would have to suddenly pull back from trying to get onto a car because the space between myself and the door was suddenly twelve times longer for a fraction of a second. (Of course, there is plenty of signage telling travelers to Mind the Gap.

Now, we can’t talk Los Angeli without talking Tacos. Or, well, tacos, the food, not the team. The selection you can find here is truly astounding. Even in their variety, each type I sampled was delicious in their own right, each filling a niche. There were healthy tacos, hearty tacos, light tacos, heavy tacos, everything tacos, everything tacos, and not a single one didn’t follow through. I’ll admit to my own taco knowledge being somewhat lacking, but you don’t need to have a masters in film to know when you’ve watched a movie you like. And each taco I was handed was not just a masterpiece in flavor, but in form. Fits perfectly into the hand, not a single drop messier than you’d like. Even the tacos of Los Angeli embrace anticapitalism- to each according to their need.  
But saying that tacos are Los Angeli’s only option for food would do a huge disservice to the rest of the cities’ thriving food culture. EAT may have been about the gods, but the citizens are living the motto to its fullest. During my time here I sampled more than a few delicious options from a wide range of cultures. The people here went all on their post-scarcity lifestyles. The worst thing about LA is that not only do I not have enough time to try everything, it would probably be impossible to. Los Angeli might seem like a daunting visit, but here’s my advice: start off with a basic taco, then explore out from there.

When it came time to head to my next location, I went back to my car and tried to head out of the city. This was where the real navigational difficulty started. I’ve heard from some that once in LA, some people can’t leave, nor do they want to. However, my problem just seemed to be that my map was inside out, so once I fixed that, I was on my way.


	3. San Francisco

I drove up the coast of California to my next stop, the Romantic Collaborative of San Francisco. This sprawling expanse was mostly consumed by the PolyHedron, which I’m most familiar with as a blaseball stadium that the Lovers play in. However, now that I’m actually here as a tourist and not a blaseball player, there is a lot that this megastructure has to offer. First off, entry by foot is not super recommended due to the Bay Area Demilitarized Zone, and there are numerous other ways to enter, involving but not limited to beanbags and positive thoughts. In my case, I managed to gain access through listening to “Power of Love'' by Huey Lewis and the News on my car stereo and hitting 88 miles per hour on the Golden Gate Bridge, which warped me right into a parking structure near the PolyHedron’s central community garden.

Romco-Frisco, as I’ve heard it’s called, is certainly one of the cities with the most unique skylines in North America. The PolyHedron makes up most of it, but its own skyline is an impressive display. But there is something missing- a sizable hole where former Lovers batter and my current teammate Sigmund Castillo used to be. Even so, love is in the air in this city- sometimes quite literally. It takes some work getting around without picking up about 3 or 4 new romantic interests.

While I was in town, I grabbed a coffee with Alexander Horne, who I met when they dragged themself fully formed out of an infernal maw in the middle of Utah during a regular season game. Horne was one of my best friends, and that had persisted even as they’d moved here a few seasons back. We’d been through a lot together. Distance doesn’t change that. I asked them a few questions about their time in Romco-Frisco while we had our caffeine and dodged meet-cute scenarios left and right.

SANDOVAL: So how’s life here in Romco-Frisco, Little? (Note: Horne is not little. They were one of the only Sunbeams who was ever taller than me, and then they got replaced with a castle. It’s like an ironic nickname, y’know?)  
HORNE: Well, it’s no Hellmouth, that’s for sure.  
S: Few places are.  
H: It’s alright! I guess I was kind of lucky that I wasn’t the only one looking for a new place to stay when I got here, because the rest of the team was as well.  
S: How’d that turn out for you all?  
H: Pretty good. It was really great getting to know everyone. You can tell a lot about someone by their taste in interior design.  
S: Didn’t you sleep under the bleachers at the stadium in Hellmouth?  
H: Yeah, but at least I decorated under there.

We chatted for a while longer, but, unfortunately, the road called, and I bid my friend farewell and headed out.

It seemed as though the rigors of 1980s-referential teleportation had not been kind to my old beater, as the engine sputtered and stalled shortly before leaving the city. For a short while, I thought that my road trip would have to end there. However, in a twist of fortune, I was approached by a local- a handsome woman who informed me she was a mechanic, and that she’d fix up my car free of charge because she “liked my style.” Always nice to meet a fan, I suppose. With her assistance and a spring in my step from a heavy helping of compliments, I found myself northbound once more.


	4. Seattle

It’s not really a secret that fans of the Sunbeams and fans of the Seattle Garages have… a competitive history. It’s hard to call it ‘bad blood,’ but they do want to kill our coach. However, I find myself lucky that most of this animosity doesn’t carry over to the players. I love a lot of what the Garages have put out, even if I find it pretty hard to find it on vinyl most of the time. Seattle is… well, I’m sure you know it’s rainy. There are a lot of coffee shops around, but I made a beeline straight for the main attraction- the Hotdogfingers Memorial Climate Pledge Garage and Parking Facility. The Big Garage. It’s an aircraft hangar, which is, y’know, a garage for planes. I’m not sure how far you can stretch the definition of ‘garage,’ but this one tracks.

As I walked the halls of the back areas of the Big Garage, music pushing out of speakers through the whole place, I encountered the most infamous woman in the league- the one and only Jaylen Hotdogfingers. She was leaning against a wall, idly tossing a blaseball from one franked hand to the other. I slowed my approach, and she gave me an icy glare. I won’t deny that Jaylen and I aren’t on good terms, but it’s never really been personal, pitcher to pitcher. We used to be in the same subleague. We pitch on the same days. There’s a weird sort of thing with us pitchers- the pitchers who pitch on the same day are kind of blind spots. I don’t check up on the games until I’m done pitching- I’m not one to check Twitter or the news on the mound, like some of my fellows- so if something happens, I’m usually the last to know. But there was no missing what Jaylen did.

I greeted her. Tensely. I was in her stadium. I noted the microphone on her hip, the way her shadow looked like someone else- the way her eyes crackled with a pink lightning when she sized me up. Truth be told, I felt pretty bad for her. It was never her fault she got brought back, but I could never forgive her for what happened after that.

I was feeling bold, though. It’d been a season since her pitches had marked people for death, and even then we’ve never been in too much danger during the siestas. Everything about Jaylen that could take me away from my Beams wasn’t on the table. She seemed almost surprised I greeted her. The conversation was short, curt- not unpleasant, but she doesn't seem the type to build bridges, and I was in no mood to. But, at the end of the day, we're all playing the same splort- it could have been any of us who followed her path. She didn't want to build bridges, but that didn't mean I had to burn the scraps.

I mean, other than that, the visit was pretty nice. I stopped by my friend Paula Turnip’s place to make sure she was settled in- it hadn’t been that long since she moved up here from Hades. She is really getting good at electric violin. Of all the places she could have gone… Seattle wasn’t half bad. The coffee’s good, the city is probably the center of modern Immaterial Plane music cultural development (mostly thanks to the Garages), and while the rain’s not for me, there are those out there who love and or need it. If you get a chance, visit Seattle. Just, uh… try not to visit Dark-Seattle. I’m not sure if it’s just a rumor or something, but, while she was taking her violin out of its case, Paula told me about what her new teammates had told her.

PAULA: It’s terrible, Sandy. It’s always sunny and bright.  
SANDOVAL: How horrifying.   
P: No, really. Seattle’s not supposed to be sunny. It’s like… it exposes stuff you’re not meant to see. Light doesn’t go there. And they don’t have music- not real music. They have a bunch of corporate shit that pushes merch.  
S: Like, ad jingles?  
P: No, like it actually pushes the merch. Makes you want to buy, buy, buy.  
S: Oh. Wow. Do you ever get, like, urban explorer types spelunking into it?  
P: Sometimes. Some of them come back with ties and stuff. All the pictures they take develop weird watermarks and they get mysteriously sued if they post them.  
S: That’s wild.  
P: Their blaseball team is totally corporately controlled. Sure, we have sponsors, but they’re so marketability-minded that they’re all completely generic.  
S: So if I were to go take a peek into this Dark-Seattle…  
P: Oh, you better not, Sandy. 

After listening to her play for a while, I gave her my union dues and said my goodbyes. Now, I trust Paula, and my trust in her was probably the only thing that kept me from seeking out the Emerald City’s dark reflection. Instead, I went and got a couple cups of coffee for the road, turned my windshield wipers on in a futile attempt of dealing with the onslaught of rain, and headed north over the border.


End file.
